• Hakeem Abol-Ghasem Ferdowsi Tousi was a dehqān (“landowner”), in 940 deriving a comfortable income from his estates, in the village of Paj, near the city of Tus, in the Khorasan region of the Samanid
  Empire, which is located in the present-day Khorasan Province of northeastern Iran. Little is known about Ferdowsi’s early life.
• According to legend, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, his patron, offered Ferdowsi a gold piece for every couplet of the Shahnameh he wrote. The poet agreed to receive the money as a lump sum when he had completed the epic. After more than thirty years of work, Ferdowsi finished his masterpiece, consisting of some 60,000 distiches/couplets/ a two-line stanza. However it is said that the Sultan was Turkic and not too keen on the Iranian glory depicted in Shahnameh, so it is said that instead of golden he received silver. Bitterly disappointed, Ferdowsi went to the bath and, on coming out, he divided the whole of the money between the bath attendants.
• “I endured much pain and strife during these thirty years — I breathed life to the Ajam (the Iranians) with this Parsi” —Ferdowsi

basi ranj bordam dar in sâl si — ajam zende kardam bedin pârsi